Lobster sushi?

Anne Ravana’s Nov. 3-4 piece on Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market was apt and entertaining for this Bangor native, six-year Tokyo resident, sushi-sashimi aficionado and oceanographer. I beg to differ with Jeffrey Porter’s comment on an early morning visit to a Tsukiji sushi bar: “It doesn’t get any fresher than this.” On this side of the Pacific, it does. In particular, how lobsters are sold and consumed may differ in some instances from the typical Down East experience.

In Japan, my first encounter with a Homarus americanus was at a supermarket, which displayed live, individually packaged (shrink-wrapped on a white Styrofoam tray, like beef in the U.S.) Canadian (too small to be legal in Maine) specimens.

As for lobster in a restaurant, the freshest consumption I’ve witnessed anywhere has been at a Japanese sushi bar. I observed a couple order their choice of two live lobsters from a well-populated tank, and what followed was fascinating. The sushi chef plucked the two condemned crustaceans from the tank, and immediately snapped off their tails, claws, and legs, setting the carapaces aside. Deftly cleaning the meat from each claw and tail, he chopped it and placed equal amounts of bite-sized morsels into the two split, upside-down tails.

Presentation for serving involved the two dismembered victims, and a wooden platter with a small pedestal for each. The sushi chef placed the fronts of the intact lobster carapaces, antennae waving, on the small pedestals, and then reunited each carapace with each upside-down, meat-filled tail; these were promptly delivered to the couple, who immediately began retrieving lobster morsels from the tails with their chopsticks as the lobsters got a good, but terminal, look at the couple consuming their hindquarters.

The process from ordering to first bite couldn’t have taken more than 30 seconds. In light of the growing appreciation for sushi in Maine, will such lobster sashimi be available at local lobster pounds soon?

Millard F. Coffin

Professor

University of Tokyo